In recent years, quadrotors have received greater attention due to their versatility in both academic research and commercial applications. In numerous places around the world, these maneuverable air vehicles are being used in commercial roles ranging from structural maintenance to private sector surveillance, such as agricultural data collection. Additionally, quadrotors are frequently utilized by military and government organizations. Examples of these are search and rescue, crowd control, domestic security as well as assisting in various military operations.
Considering their popularity, different research has been conducted in modeling the dynamics and control of the quadrotors. The scope and application of the research recently completed is somewhat diverse. In some publications, authors focus attention on the dynamical details of the quadrotor in all aspects of flight; from the hover state and motor modeling to aerodynamic blade flapping. In other publications, the concentration is based on aggressive maneuvering, trajectory generation and controller design for multiple stages or phases of flight. This information has been further synthesized and advanced in a number of ways. In the concept of trajectory generation, quadrotor control is applied in various stages of flight to both the single air vehicle case, as well as team or swarm applications. In these applications, multiple quadrotors may be implemented and controlled and various types of controllers may be tuned in order to provide desirable system response characteristics throughout the flight envelope and intended purpose.
Various applications involving swarm control of quadrotors to accomplish collaborative tasks are known; however, there has been limited or no attempt to study the physical coupling of two discrete quadrotor agents.
It is with these observations in mind, among others, that various aspects of the present disclosure were conceived and developed.